Patentability or Novelty Search

Purpose & Use

The primary purpose of conducting the patentability search or novelty search is to confirm if the process or the product that is invented can be patented. This is the preliminary test that has to be carried out before filing a patent application.
The results of patentability search helps in patent drafting to ensure that claims of the patent are not too broad to overlap the existing prior art and not to narrow to miss the coverage. The results of patentability search can be given as references in background section of patent. These patents, once cited and approved by examiner, cannot invalidate the granted patent.

Process & Reporting

The search is conducted globally using patent databases and non-patent or article databases. Besides, one can also carry out the search at the time of drafting complete specification if ones has not conducted the search before filing the respective provisional application. The patent search is executed by using commercial patent and non patent databases using a broader search string that results in number of patents and this step is followed by patent analysis. To identify the precise patents related to the invention in less time, the patent analysis step has to be carried out in two phases. The first phase is to filter the relevant patents by going through the title, abstract and independent claim of the patents, which results in number of patents that are closer to the invention. The second analysis phase is more intensive and requires analyst to read through complete specification of shortlisted prior art from phase one. The shortlisted results after phase two are similar to subject invention and are delivered to client in a well documented report format.

See a free sample and know about pricing & delivery time of a typical Patentability study: